CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Once again, Ruth joined her daughters on the drawing-room carpet, only to find that Clare already had her thumb firmly planted on the North Col.
“They should have been back over an hour ago.”
Odell didn’t comment, although he knew George was right. They stood outside the team tent and stared up at the mountain, willing Norton, Somervell, and Morshead to appear.
If Norton and Somervell had reached the summit, George’s only regret-although he would never have admitted it to anyone other than Ruth-would be not putting himself in the first team.
George checked his watch again, and calculated that they could wait no longer. He turned to the rest of his team, all of whom were peering anxiously up the mountain. “Right, it’s time to put together a search party. Who wants to join me?”
Several hands shot up.
A few minutes later, George, Finch, Odell, and Sherpa Nyima were fully kitted out and ready to go. George set off up the mountain without another word. A biting cold wind was whistling down the pass and tore into their skin, covering them in a thin wafer of snow that immediately froze onto their parched cheeks.
George had never faced a more determined or bitter enemy, and he knew that no one could hope to survive a night in these conditions. They must find them.
“Madness, this is nothing but madness!” he shouted into the howling gale, but Boreas didn’t heed him and kept on blowing.
After more than two hours of the worst conditions George had ever experienced, he could hardly place one foot in front of the other. He was about to give the order to return to the camp when he heard Finch cry out, “I can see three little lambs who’ve lost their way, baa, baa, baa!”
Ahead of them, almost invisible against the rocky background, George could just make out three lost climbers shuffling slowly down the mountain. The rescue party moved as quickly as they could toward them. Desperate as they all were to find out if Norton and Somervell had reached the summit, they looked so exhausted that no one attempted to ask them. Norton was holding a hand over his right ear, and George took the poor fellow by the elbow and guided him slowly back down the mountain. He glanced over his shoulder to see Somervell a few feet behind. His face gave no clue as to the success or failure of their mission. He finally looked at Morshead, whose face remained expressionless as he staggered on.
It was another hour before the camp came into sight. In the murky twilight, George guided the three climbers into the team tent, where mugs of lukewarm tea awaited them. The moment Norton stepped into the tent he collapsed on his knees. Guy Bullock rushed to his side and began to examine his frostbitten ear, which was black and blistered.
While Morshead and Somervell knelt over the flame of the Primus stove trying to thaw out, the rest of the team stood around in silence, waiting for one of them to break the news. It was Somervell who spoke first, but not until he’d drunk several gulps of tea laced with brandy.
“We couldn’t have made a better start this morning, having put up the tent at Camp V,” he began, “but after about a thousand feet, we walked straight into a snowstorm,” he added between breaths. “My throat became so bunged up I could hardly breathe.” He paused again. “Norton thumped me on the back until I was violently sick, which temporarily solved the problem, but by then I didn’t have the strength to take another step. Norton waited for me to recover before we struck out across the North Face.”
Norton picked up the story while Somervell took another gulp of tea. “It was hopeless. We made a little more progress, but the snowstorm didn’t ease up, so we had no choice but to turn back.”
“What height did you reach?” asked George.
Norton passed the altimeter to his climbing leader. “Twenty-six thousand eight hundred and fifty feet,” gasped George. “That’s the highest any man has ever climbed.”
The rest of the team burst into spontaneous applause.
“If only you’d taken oxygen,” said Finch, “you might have reached the summit.”
No one else offered an opinion.
“This is going to hurt, I’m afraid, old fellow,” said Bullock, picking up a pair of scissors and warming them over the Primus. He bent down and carefully began trimming off parts of Norton’s right ear.
The following morning, George rose at 6:00 A.M. He stuck his head out of his tent to see a clear sky, without the slightest suggestion of wind. Finch and Odell were sitting cross-legged on the ground, devouring a hearty breakfast.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” said George. He was so keen to be on the move that he ate breakfast standing up, and was ready to set off ten minutes later. Bullock, Morshead, and Somervell crawled out of their tents to wish them Godspeed. Norton remained flat on his back.
George took Norton’s advice on which route they should take and led Finch and Odell slowly toward the North Ridge. Despite the clear, windless conditions, every pace seemed more demanding than the last because they had to take three breaths for each stride they advanced. Finch had insisted on strapping two cylinders of oxygen to his back. Would he prove to be right, and end up the only one who could keep going?
Hour after hour, they trudged on up the mountain in silence. It was not until the late afternoon that they felt the first breath of icy wind that met them like an unwelcome guest. Within minutes the gentle breeze had turned into a gale. If George’s altimeter hadn’t confirmed that they were only a hundred yards from Camp V, at 25,000 feet, he would have turned back.
One hundred yards became an hour as the wind and snow lashed relentlessly at their bodies, tearing into their garments as if searching mercilessly for any exposed skin, while trying to blow them back down the mountain whence they’d come. When they finally reached the tent, George could only pray that the bad weather would have cleared by the morning, otherwise they would have to return, as they couldn’t hope to survive such conditions for
